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Whew! Hi! I feel like I haven’t looked up from work in days. Things are busy, busy, busy over here and we are loving it! Every day, it seems, we have new clients, new projects, new missions, new platforms, new techniques, new knowledge and new wisdom.

In the spirit of newness and ever-changing technology, today we offer you this: Talking Heads. No, not the band. A talking head video is basically a small person who walks onto your website and tells your viewer something really important. You know how important and popular videos on websites are right now, and a talking head video is even more interesting and even more engaging!

Aside from just being really cool, talking heads draw more attention than a basic video because they’re still fairly unique. They also start playing immediately, gaining the audience of those visitors who might never press play on a standard website video.

Want to see one in action? Visit America’s Business Management, one of our recent clients, and check it out! Then, come back here and tell us what you think!

We hear these questions fairly regularly from our clients. There seems to be a feeling that blogging was SOOOOO ten years ago, and that advanced social platforms have rendered it obsolete. That is simply not the case. In fact, blogging is more popular now than it was years ago. Perhaps that’s because more people are online than ten years ago. Perhaps it’s because the evolving and cutting edge blogging platforms — like Tumblr and WordPress — are exciting and fun. Or perhaps it’s because through the years, people have realized just how useful blogging is. In any case, we always suggest our clients use blogs. Here are some of our many reasons.

Share your passion. You do what you do because you love it. You’re passionate about it. And blogging is an excellent way to share that passion. Your passion will ignite your readers’ passions, and that’s all good for you.

Share your knowledge. When you create a blog and write about something you know, you are positioning yourself as someone who is knowledgeable about your industry or topic. When you write consistent, solid blog posts that are interesting and accurate, you will quickly establish your validity as an expert. And who would you rather take advice and buy things from — an expert or just some guy?

Attract different readers. Many blogging platforms — WordPress and Tumblr included — are actually a social network all their own. That means people go to WordPress or Tumblr just to be on WordPress or Tumblr and browse around. On these kinds of blogging platforms, you will get readers who otherwise might never have found you. And, if they like what you have to say, many of them will visit your website or convert in some other way!

Create more content. All the content you create links back to you. You might say, “All roads lead to Rome.” Blogging is a great way to generate deep, interesting content. Even SEO optimized content. And all that lovely, juicy content is indexed and searched by things like Google. So, blogging becomes yet another way that you can make yourself easier to find. And that, in itself, is enough of a reason to blog!

Interaction is the purpose of social media, right? It’s the thing we’re all striving to do and do well. But how do you start? Here are ten excellent ways to begin interacting on Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter-Specific

1. Retweet interesting content often. People like it when you retweet their content, and could begin following you as a result. In addition, you’ll show people you’re engaged in a way beyond simply posting your own content.

2. Check out your followers and start conversations with them. Find something interesting about them — something they post, something in the bio on their profile page or something on their website — and start a conversation with them publicly. By conversing with them via a reply (rather than a direct message), you have the added benefit of allowing other people to see you interact.

3. Find interesting conversations on Twitter and get involved. Use Twitter’s integrated search feature to search for something interesting. Find a conversation or post and reply to it to get yourself in on the conversation.

4. Find someone who knows something you want to know, then publicly ask them for advice or information. Again, do this publicly (and not in a direct message) so your interaction is available for the world to see.

5. Check out trending topics on Twitter. Find one that relates to your expertise and join the conversation. The more you interact publicly, the better, and if you can showcase your expertise, that’s better still!

6. Search for people who are talking about problems you can help with and talk to them about it (publicly, of course). So, if your business is anti-aging, search for and find people who are posting about feeling old, for example. Then, tell them how you can help them — but be sure to make it sound authentic and personal, rather than like an advertisement.

*TIP* Twitter’s default method of replying to someone is to use the @ symbol before their name in your post (for example, @kaboomjohn). When you reply this way, only people who follow both you and the person you’re talking to will be able to see your conversation. To get around this, use @ with a . in front of it (for example, .@kaboomjohn). This will allow everyone to see the conversation. It’s really important to do this so that anyone who looks at your Twitter profile can see your interactions.

Twitter & Facebook

7. Organize a contest or giveaway through your social media. Create a contest by offering to give something away for free — your product or service, or someone else’s product or service you like. Promote your contest through posts before and during the event. This could be a trivia contest where the first person to answer correctly wins, or a random person from a pool of correct answers wins. It could be an action contest, where you ask your followers to do something and post a picture of it to you, and then a random person who completed the task wins. It could also be just a random drawing, so you ask people to reply to you on Twitter or comment on your Facebook page to enter, then you pick a random winner on a published date.

8. Take a poll. Ask your followers what they think about something. Do try to make sure you have active and engaged followers before you do this, though, so you won’t end up with an unanswered poll!

9. Offer customer service through your social media networks. This is both passive and proactive. Passively, give out your social network info to customers and let them know it’s another way they can reach you for customer service and support, just like email or telephone. Proactively, use Twitter’s search feature to look for people talking about your product or service. Talk to them. When you see someone complaining about or having a problem with your product or service, reply to them proactively (and publicly) and let them know how you can help them resolve it. This has the big added advantage of helping you manage your brand’s reputation.

10. Find your current customers and clients on your social media networks and talk to them. While social media networks are great for building your clients, they’re also fantastic for connecting with people with whom you already do business. Connecting on social media allows customers to feel more involved, and therefore more loyal, to you and your brand. Let your customers know how to find you on your social media networks — and if you have their email addresses, search for them and start conversations.

Have questions for us or more ideas about how to interact on your social networks? We want to hear what you have to say! Sound off in the comments.